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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / MAY 17, 2019

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS AND THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY RELEASE DIGITAL
RECORDING OF HENRY BRANT’S PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING SPATIAL COMPOSTION
ICE FIELD ON SFS MEDIA LABEL MAY 17, 2019

Organist Cameron Carpenter featured on first-ever recording of Brant’s work, written specifically for
Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony, and Davies Symphony Hall

Digital-only release available for streaming and download in one-of-a-kind binaural headphones
experience produced using Dolby Atmos system

Listen now and learn more at sfsymphony.org/brant

SAN FRANCISCO—Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the

San Francisco Symphony (SFS) announce the release of Brant Ice Field,
featuring organist Cameron Carpenter. Recorded live during
performances at Davies Symphony Hall in September 2014, this latest
release from the San Francisco Symphony’s eight-time Grammy Award-
winning in-house recording label, SFS Media, is a one-of-a-kind binaural
headphones experience produced using Dolby Atmos®. Henry Brant’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning Ice Field—written expressly for MTT, the SFS, and
Davies Symphony Hall—is available now for streaming and download.

Michael Tilson Thomas has, throughout his career, championed the

work of iconoclastic 20th Century American composers—“mavericks” in
his own words. MTT comments: “Henry’s compositions create a huge
world of sound. His Ice Field is a vast sonic landscape on a huge scale that was written specifically for the
acoustics of Davies Symphony Hall. The piece is a kind of a concerto grosso for organ and orchestra. Not only
are the forces of a huge orchestra divided from the top balcony to positions on (or seemingly under) the stage,
but they are coupled with the full power of our Ruffatti organ. When we played the premiere, the organ part
was partially improvised by Henry himself. He was a very slight guy, but one of the wildest people I’ve met as
far as his musical imagination and spontaneity. When organist Cameron Carpenter joined us for this recording
of Ice Field, he too had a reputation for being one of the wilder people in music. I shared with Cameron my
experience of Henry’s free spirit and imagination, and from that moment on, Cameron pushed the instrument
as far it could go.”

The full title of the piece, Ice Field: Spatial Narratives for Large and Small Orchestral Groups, indicates the
nature of Brant’s “spatial” approach to composition. Ice Field was commissioned for the SFS by Other Minds, a
San Francisco-based new music organization founded by composer Charles Amirkhanian. Ice Field received its
world premiere by MTT and the SFS in December, 2001, with the composer at the organ. Brant won a 2002
Pulitzer Prize for the work the following year.

For Brant, “space,” created by the location of

the instruments in the hall, is a crucial
compositional element. Ice Field was devised
to use the expressive spatial possibilities of
Davies Symphony Hall, dividing the orchestra
into various groups and positioning them in
the organ loft, second tier, on stage, and in
the side boxes, thus creating a multi-
directional aspect to the sound for the
listener. He also uses elements of
improvisation in the composition. Of his
spatial technique Brant has said, “I had come
to feel that single-style music, no matter how
experimental or full of variety, could no
longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities, Henry Brant and Michael Tilson Thomas prepare for the world premiere
and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life of Ice Field in Davies Symphony Hall, 2001.

on the spirit.” In his spatial music he found a solution that he believed would “speak more expressively of the
human predicament.”

San Francisco Symphony Recording Engineer and Producer for this album, Jack Vad, describes the unique way
in which this recording was produced: “Utilizing Dolby Atmos allowed us to take unconventionally located
musical performance elements and create a listening experience that provides imaging from the front, center,
back, side, and above in ways that are extremely realistic. Dolby Atmos is a superior technology when
compared to anything else that we’re aware of in the music world. Once we started experimenting with this
recording of Brant’s Ice Field in Dolby Atmos, we quickly realized that it would actually be possible to finally
represent this work the way it should be heard. Ultimately, we created a file that, by listening with a standard
set of headphones, allows the listener to have both a clear sense that there is not only activity all around but
that one can accurately pinpoint where specific sound elements are originating.”

For more information; photos; audio samples; a short documentary video about the performance,
recording, and engineering process; digital liner notes featuring a foreward written by MTT; and written
interviews with composer Henry Brant and Producer Jack Vad, visit sfsymphony.org/brant. To request a
digital review copy of the recording, email the San Francisco Symphony Public Relations Department at
publicrelations@sfsymphony.org.

Henry Brant (1913-2008), America’s pioneer explorer and practitioner of 20th Century spatial music, was born
in Montreal in 1913 to American parents and began to compose at the age of eight. In 1929 he moved to New
York where for the next 20 years he composed and conducted for radio, films, ballet and jazz groups, at the
same time composing experimentally for the concert hall. From 1947 to 1955 he taught orchestration and
conducted ensembles at The Juilliard School and Columbia University. At Bennington College, from 1957 to
1980, he taught composition; and every year he presented premieres of orchestral and choral works by living
composers. For the last 27 years of his life, Brant made his home in Santa Barbara, California. MTT and the SF
Symphony recorded Charles Ives’ A Concord Symphony orchestrated by Henry Brant for SFS Media in 2010.

Organist Cameron Carpenter has been a frequent guest of the SF Symphony

since his debut on the organ series in 2010, appearing in many subsequent
seasons in solo recital, in the Film Series, or with the Orchestra. Cameron's
repertoire—from the complete works of J. S. Bach to film scores, his original
compositions and hundreds of transcriptions and arrangements—is probably
the largest and most diverse of any organist. He is the first concert organist in
history to prefer the digital organ to the pipe organ, and to champion it as
the future of the instrument. In 2014, Cameron launched his International
Touring Organ—a monumental cross-genre digital organ built by Marshall &
Ogletree to his own design—in extensive tours in Europe and the USA. His
Sony Music debut album If You Could Read My Mind entered Billboard's
Traditional Classical chart at No. 1 on its US release. A former child prodigy,
Cameron Carpenter trained at the American Boychoir School, the North
Carolina School of the Arts and has two degrees from The Juilliard School. He
holds the 2012 Leonard Bernstein Award, is the first solo organist ever nominated for a Grammy® Award for a
solo album, and has appeared with many of the great orchestras around the world; he has spoken and
debated at think tanks and conferences including TED, IdeaCity, The Entertainment Gathering, and many
more.

SFS Media is the San Francisco Symphony’s award-winning in-house label, launched in 2001. SFS Media
releases reflect MTT and the SFS’s artistic vision of showcasing music by American composers as well as core
classical masterworks, and embody the broad range of programming that has been a hallmark of the MTT/SFS
partnership. Recorded live in concert and engineered at Davies Symphony Hall, audio recordings are released
on hybrid SACD and in high-resolution digital formats. SFS Media has garnered eight Grammy awards. SFS
Media also produces and releases documentary and live performance videos, including the SFS’s national
public television series and multimedia project Keeping Score, which includes three seasons of television
episodes, eight documentaries, and eight concert films designed to make classical music more accessible to
people of all ages and musical backgrounds. The Keeping Score series is now available as a digital download
and on DVD and Blu-ray. Other videos of the San Francisco Symphony available from SFS Media include A
Celebration of Leonard Bernstein: Opening Night at Carnegie Hall 2008 and San Francisco Symphony at 100, a
documentary about the Symphony’s history, which won a Northern California Emmy Award.

Brant Ice Field is available May 17 through digital outlets worldwide, including iTunes, Amazon, AppleMusic,
Spotify, Primephonic, HDTracks, and Google Play. All SFS Media physical recordings are also available from the
Symphony Store in Davies Symphony Hall, as well as from all major retailers. Global distribution of all SFS
Media products is managed by Warner Classics Label Services.

Title: Brant: Ice Field

Composer: Henry Brant (1913–2008)
Producer: Jack Vad
Engineering Support: Roni Jules, Gus Pollek, Jonathon Stevens, Denise Woodward
Post-Production: Jack Vad, Mark Willsher,
Dolby Atmos Post-Production: John Loose, Jack Vad, Mark Willsher

Artists: San Francisco Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director
Cameron Carpenter, Organ
Edwin Outwater, Conductor

Work: Ice Field

Commissioned by: Other Minds
Recorded: September 18–21, 2014. All works recorded in PCM and 24-bit/192kHz audio live in Davies
Symphony Hall

Label: SFS Media

Catalogue Number: SFS-0075
Release Date: May 17, 2019
Total Run Time: 00:24:31
Price: $3.99 / £3.49 / €3.99

Description: Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony team up with iconoclastic
organist Cameron Carpenter to release the first-ever recording of Henry Brant’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning spatial composition, Ice Field. Put on your headphones for a
unique Dolby Atmos immersive experience that allows us to hear Brant’s work as it
was intended: as a vast acoustical soundscape for 100 players scattered throughout
Davies Symphony Hall. Visit sfsymphony.org/brant and digital stores everywhere to
hear and learn more about this groundbreaking recording.

Media copies: Members of the press may request a digital review copy of the recording, high-res
photos, video for embed, and digital liner notes from the San Francisco Symphony
Public Relations Department at publicrelations@sfsymphony.org.

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